Using an Announcement to Rise To the Top with PR and Marketing - Growth Hacking

In July 2013, ProfitBricks, a cloud computing provider cut it’s pricing by 50% to assume the price/performance leadership position in the industry. Marketing (in-house) & PR (outsourced) worked
…

In July 2013, ProfitBricks, a cloud computing provider cut it’s pricing by 50% to assume the price/performance leadership position in the industry. Marketing (in-house) & PR (outsourced) worked together to create an inbound and outbound program I smashed all goals for traffic, mentions, backlinks, signups and customers. William Toll (@utollwi), VP, Marketing at ProfitBricks and Chuck Tanowitz (@ctanowitz) Vice President, Public Relations & Editorial Services at HB Agency will share the details of how they did it and provide some key tips for your next big announcement.

18.
Story Line Development & 3rd Party Support
■
Key message development
– Focus on Price? Or Margins? – Which story will resonate – based on
ProfitBricks market standing and the media’s interest?
– Do we have the evidence? Can we make the case?
– Who are we targeting?
■
■
“Preventing the Cheap” label with price/performance leadership
position
Validating the Story
– 3rd party support – Analysts/Thought Leaders, Customers

19.
Story Line Development & 3rd Party Support
■
Content integration
– Supporting the story
■
Timing
– What day do we push? Key media availability, interviews, ability to
extend story across multiple days
■
Know your media and thought leaders
– Who leads? Who follows?
■
Contingency planning
– “what if” scenarios.

20.
Press Release
• It’s all about the story.
• Get quotes from customers & analysts
• Provide specific details – quotable
sentences – test them
• Add an image – saves a reporter time
• Include links to fresh content and call to
actions – webinars, white papers, videos
etc. These help attract links from sites
when you secure coverage
• Outreach, outreach and more outreach
http://www.profitbricks.com/press-and-infocenter/press-releases/20130731-cloud-iaaspricing-cut-new-price-performance-leaderemerges
• Press release doesn’t GET coverage, it
just supports it

22.
TechCrunch
In the end I’m impressed with
ProfitBricks, but not for its claims of
how much cheaper they are or how
much more AWS could actually drop its
own prices. More so, it’s the power of
its platform and how the company is
approaching the market that is most
impressive.
ProfitBricks charges only for compute
and storage, and customers pay for
what they consume, which speaks to
the company’s pricing claims. They
strive to be a pure-play service with
InfiniBand networking, which makes
their offering super fast.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/31/profitbri
cks-drops-prices-makes-big-claims-aboutaws-and-its-high-costs/

23.
GigaOM
ProfitBricks, a German-based company
with U.S. headquarters in Boston,
pitches its view of scale-up cloud
instances, paired with fast Infiniband
connectivity, as an attractive alternative
to Amazon Web Services.
http://gigaom.com/2
013/07/31/takethat-amazonprofitbricks-cutscloud-pricing/

24.
Ben Kepes, Diversity.net
First the easy part. ProfitBricks is dropping
its IaaS prices by 50% and in doing so is
reaching a price point which is roughly
half that of its major competitors.
ProfitBricks is an interesting company.
Their scale up as opposed to scale out
approach is in contrast to the generally
held consensus around the rightway to
deliver IaaS. That said, the performance
and price combination they’re offering
starts to look promising.
http://diversity.net.
nz/priceperformance-orboth-profitbricksextends-theconversation/2013/0
7/31/

25.
CIO.com
Some other analysts are buying into
ProfitBricks' claims too. After being
briefed by the company, Ben Kepes, a
blogger, consultant and investor, questions
why Amazon virtual machine instance
price reductions have not gone down at
the same pace as compute performance
increases and Moore's Law. "Moore's Law
expected price economies really haven't
been borne out in actuality," he writes
about Amazon pricing.
http://www.cio.com/article/7
37446/Is_Amazon_Really_a_L
ow_Margin_Cloud_Business_
?taxonomyId=3024

26.
Business Insider
But the folks at cloud computing competitor
ProfitBricks say that Amazon's low margins are a
myth. They say that the company is really making 6080% profit.
To prove that, ProfitBricks cut its prices in half on
Wednesday, to a measly 3.25 cents an hour for
compute time including 1G RAM (yes, less than 4
cents). And it says at that rate, it's still making plenty
of profit.
This compares to somewhere between 6 cents and 60
cents an hour for Amazon.
http://www.busin
essinsider.com/am
azon-cloud-ishugely-profitable2013-7

27.
CRN.com
"Amazon always makes the impression that it's
lowering prices. But in reality, its gross margin
is around 80 percent. That's why it's not
difficult to undercut Amazon on pricing,"
Gauger told CRN in an interview.
ProfitBricks also claims a performance
advantage over its more established
competitors. When processor, disk and
network speeds are taken into account,
ProfitBricks' cloud servers are twice as fast as
Amazon and Rackspace, Gauger said.
ProfitBricks' IaaS uses Infiniband, a
supercomputing technology that allows for
speedy networking connections between
virtual machines, as well as flexible VM sizes.
ProfitBricks uses a "scale-up" approach, which
doesn't force customers to pick from a menu of
set server configurations, and instead lets
them choose the amount of CPU cores, RAM
and storage they need.
"If you want more RAM, you're not forced to
buy more CPU, too. With us, you can configure
your VMs any way you want," Gauger told
CRN.
http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/240159395/clou
d-startup-profitbricks-says-amazons-cloud-pricecuts-are-deceiving.htm

28.
CloudPro.com
In terms of its technology, one of the ways that
ProfitBricks has sought to distinguish itself is
through the use of the faster InfiniBand
technology instead of Ethernet, and all hardware
at its facilities is equipped with dual InfiniBand
network interface cards. The company has said it
is the "first and so far only IaaS company using
this technology."
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/iaas/5879/cloud-pricing-hideshuge-profit-margins-claims-profitbricks

35.
Key Takeaways & Learning's
• Executive Team, Marketing & PR must by in alignment
• Identify the key storyline and sub-stories – test them with thought leaders and analysts
• Target specific reporters, analysts, influencers and bloggers on your list – know who
leads and follows.
• Build Content – support your story
• Make sure executives are available for interviews
• Assign a “project owner”
• Set goals for Traffic, Coverage, Links, Signups, Chats, Cost per Lead, Cost per
Acquisition etc.
• Make sure the website, signup forms and contact us are all working and optimized for
conversions
• Monitor and engage on social media
• Get all employees involved.